


Rooftops

by sawbones



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 07:58:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11505048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sawbones/pseuds/sawbones
Summary: Bethany wants to learn how to support herself and her family.





	Rooftops

**Author's Note:**

> If Pillowtalk happened at the end of Kirkwall's summer, then Rooftops happened at the beginning. An anon request on my tumblr for some "some sweet isabella/bethany".

Of all the places to be in Kirkwall on a hot summer’s afternoon, the flat roof of a semi-derelict squat in sweltering down-town was one of the last places Bethany would have picked, but it wasn’t half bad once she managed to climb up there. It caught the tail-end of a breeze, more so than the baking streets below, and you could just about make out the harbour in the distance, the masts of many shabby boats bobbing lazily between the buildings. 

She could see why Isabela had claimed it as her own. She had even stacked up a few broken wooden palettes, draped them with some sort of old bedsheet to make a little shade. She was sprawled out between it, propped up on a rolled-up rug with a bottle of something cradled in her lap. Her boots were off, kicked aside; her feet were the only part of her in the sun, and she wiggled her toes when Bethany sat down beside her.

“Who told--?” she began, tilting her head to the side.

“Corff,” Bethany said, “In exchange for some help with writing.”

“Speed griffons?” 

“Speed griffons.”

Isabela smiled, took a swig of her bottle. She offered it to Bethany, “You’ll regret telling him you know how to read.”

Bethany took the bottle, held it between her hands - they were chafed and raw from the menial jobs she’d been doing around the house, trying to scrub Gamlen’s hovel into a home. No-one helped, of course, but she didn’t expect them too. If she was honest, the hard work had been an almost-welcome distraction from everything else. Frost began to creep across the glass, and she handed it back, “It’s not so bad. I’ve been asked for worse favours.”

Isabela’s smile was wry, and it creased the corner of her eyes. She scratched lines in the frost with her thumbnail, “I assume you didn’t track me down to talk about over-imaginative barmen.”

“I need work,” Bethany said after a moment’s hesitation. There was no point in drawing it out.

“What kind of work?” Isabela asked, narrowing her eyes, thumb pressed to the lip of her bottle.

“The kind that pays well.”

There was no shift in her expression beyond a slight thinning of her lips, “Sunshine--”

“Don’t,” Bethany blurted, “Please, don’t start. I know what Hawke made you promise, but things are different now. Isabela, they’ve been gone for too long, and-- and mother can’t work, and Gamlen won’t. Aveline can’t support all three of us.”

“If things are really that desperate, I could help,” Isabela said with a soft insistence, but Bethany shook her head, set her jaw.

“I know you think you’re protecting me, and I’m grateful, I really am--” she put her hand on Isabela’s arm, who jumped at the cold still lingering in her fingertips, “Don’t leave me helpless. I’m sick of having to rely on others. Teach me how to fend for myself.”

Isabela looked away and took a deep drink from her bottle. She sat it on the roof between her thighs with a sigh, and placed her hand on top of Bethany’s. Their fingers twined as she squinted out at the sliver of sea, barely visible between the crooked buildings. Jobs - real jobs, safe and steady, where you could rely on a wage at the end of the day and didn’t have to fear a man’s hands on you - were scarcer than hen’s teeth in Kirkwall. Bethany knew her magic ruled her out of nearly all legitimate forms of employment anyway, should she ever run into the many Templars or their informants in the city. 

“It doesn’t have to be anything too risky,” Bethany pressed, “We did some smuggling when we first got to the city, and we were half way good at it, but Athenril--”

“You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”

Bethany pressed her tongue to her teeth, let her rehearsed speech wither and die. She had expected more resistance, to have to twist it out of Isabela. She’d been ready to argue the point over it, and the fact that she didn’t made Bethany realise that perhaps she wasn’t the only one who had been ruminating over a future without Hawke. Isabela squeezed her hand, and she felt an answering ache in her chest. She could pretend she didn’t know why, but what good would that do either of them? Bethany wanted to frost her fingers again and slip them up the curve of Isabela’s neck where sweat darkened the edges of her unruly waves, to ease the heat and make her lips part in pleasant surprise. 

Instead, she leant forward as Isabela went on talking, stealing a little of her space, their thighs touching. She didn’t seem to mind.

“I just want you to think about it. Really think about it. I know you’re going to go ahead and do something foolish with or without my help - you Hawkes are all as pigheaded as each other,” she said with a quiet fondness, “I also know what it’s like when you’re out on your own for the first time. The least I can do is stop you from making the same mistakes I did.”

“I’m not so shortsighted to think I’m on my own. I have my mother. I have Aveline, and even Gamlen,” Bethany said, “I have you.”

Isabela flashed her teeth in a smile warmer than the sun; maybe it wasn’t enough to burn away the knot of worry Bethany was tangled in, but it singed the edges at least. 

“That you do, sweetness. That you do.”


End file.
